MediaTalk; At These Web Sites, It's a Man's World

By DAVID CARR

Published: October 4, 2004

Gawker Media, the Internet publishing company behind gossipy media and political blogs like Gawker, Defamer and Wonkette, is looking to increase its testosterone level with several new sites focused on male amusements.

Today, the company is introducing Kotaku, a computer gaming site; Screenhead, an entertainment site that uses flash animation and Photoshop to amuse in frat-boy ways; and Jalopnik, a souped-up car site. These male-oriented sites will feel at home at Gawker, which also publishes a porn site called Fleshbot and a tech-toy site called Gizmodo.

''The motivation for rolling out these sites now is very much about advertiser and audience demand,'' said Nick Denton, the publisher of Gawker Media. ''Right now, we don't have enough inventory for people who are trying to reach young males. The idea was to come up with sites that would interest them -- around here, we say that Screenhead is a site built for men who are too lazy to watch TV.''

Mr. Denton said that the growing rate of broadband use had created an audience very much in the habit of keeping a laptop open and running as part of their leisure time. And since the majority of the viewers of the company's sites are people from the ages of 18 to 34, two-thirds of them male, advertisers are beginning to buy in, Mr. Denton said.

The Jalopnik site is exclusively sponsored by Audi, marking an unusual alliance between a major producer of hard goods and the often chaotic world of blogging.

Brad Brinegar, chief executive of McKinney & Silver, the advertising agency for Audi, said, ''This seemed like a very low-cost opportunity for us to tap into an intelligent and Web-active audience. I think we all know that more and more, the Web is becoming a key source of information and image.''

Mr. Denton said: ''I don't know about all this talk about a revolution in media habits. These are just online magazines that appeal to a certain kind of reader. We have been able to attract them and sell standard advertising units. That's it.'' DAVID CARR

Photo: Nick Denton says advertisers want a way to reach young men. (Photo by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)